Eating from garbage without buying any food on a 3,000km route across Europe – that’s what a young Frenchman decided to do in order to raise awareness about how much food is wasted.

Baptiste Dubanchet has
already crossed Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and
the Czech Republic on a bicycle trip which started in Paris on
April, 15. Warsaw, Poland, is his final destination, which he
hopes to reach in two weeks.

The aim of his adventure “is to make this trip relying only
from food destined to be thrown away, from hotels, restaurants,
grocery stores, supermarkets and markets, in order to denounce
food waste,” Dubanchet wrote on his website
dubbed La Faim du Monde (World Hunger).

According to the 25-year-old, the waste takes place at the
expense of millions of people who are starving.

"I really didn't think we were wasting as much as we
are," he told the Local. "Even when you know about it,
it's still surprising to open a garbage can and find so many
potatoes, so much fruit, yogurt, sometimes 500-liter or
1000-liter bins are filled with things that are still good enough
to eat."

When he arrives in a city, he first starts looking for local
supermarkets or bakeries that can provide him with food that
would otherwise be thrown out. But only one in every 10 places
gives him something to eat.

“I have to find food fast because after all the cycling I am
tired and I need the energy,” he said. “Is my stomach
full or empty? That is the most important thing, not what I am
eating."

Dubanchet noticed an interesting detail: the companies don’t give
away free food. The majority of store workers told him that the
products in the bin were unfit for eating.

Moreover, many supermarkets prefer to keep the bins with ‘waste’
food inside and if they are outside they locked them up behind
fences or top them with barbed wire, Dubanchet said.

During his ‘food hunt’ he uses a poster saying ‘La faim du
monde’. But the sign doesn’t always help. In the Czech
Republic he asked about 50 places before he was given some food.

“The Czech Republic was the hardest, people just didn't
understand the concept,” he said, “They associate taking
trash with homeless people. Finally, I was given a lot of
leftover bread from a bakery which I made last for five
days.”

So far only French supermarkets have been happy to give him
‘food for garbage’. The adventurer said he is going to
visit them again on his way home, "I imagine I'll see things
a bit differently after my trip.”

In order to raise more awareness of issue of waste and the impact
it has on the environment, a brave adventurer stops at local
schools after each 60km of his route.

“I tell [schoolchildren] how much non-renewable resources are
consumed every day and that one day these will run out,” he
said.

Dubanchet decided to undertake such a journey after his seeing
lots of hungry people during his visits to Colombia, South East
Asia and Tahiti.

“I was rich in poor countries. I was sad these people were so
poor. These people have no choice. They did not choose to be
poor, so I decided to do something to show how much good food we
waste,” he said.

He believes that reducing food waste means more food available, a
reduction of pollution and a reduction of food’s cost.

“What motivated me to build this project is most likely
having faced poverty among vulnerable populations, often
achieving a certain indifference of developed countries,” he
wrote on the website.

Earlier he told the Local.de that the whole project was a way for
him to protest.

“If we produced less, food would become more precious to
us,” he said.

Dubanchet decided to undertake his journey exactly this year as
2014 has been declared European Year against Food Waste by
European Parliament.

According to UN World Food Program, about 842 million people in
do not have enough to eat.